Many peripherals to computer networks include a scanner component. One example of such a peripheral is an “All-in-one”, also known as a multifunction peripheral (MFP) in that it has the capability to perform the multiple functions of scanning hardcopy documents, copying, and printing. Another example is a digital network copier that scans in documents from an automatic document feeder, does high volume copying, and has the capabilities of binding, collating, folding, stacking, stapling, stitching, edge-trimming, paginating, and printing on substrates of varied composition. Each of these peripherals, when in communication with an interconnecting network, can also be described as being a digital transmitter device. A digital transmitter device typically has an input device (e.g. a keyboard), a display, a scanner, and an output device. The output device of the digital transmitter device can be for sending a facsimile or an electronic mail message (e-mail). A digital transmitter device need not have a printer.
In an exemplary scanning operation, a hardcopy of a document or other physical object can be presented to the scanner portion of a digital transmitter device. After scanning, the digital transmitter device transforms the scanned image into a digital representation. If the digital transmitter device has a printer, the digital representation can be rendered to the printer to produce one or more hardcopies. If the digital transmitter device has facsimile transmission capabilities and a network over which to transmit a facsimile, the digital transmitter device can render the digital representation of the scanned image into a facsimile image that can be transmitted over the network to a predetermined or input facsimile telephone number.
In an exemplary digital transmitting operation, a hardcopy of a document or other physical object can be presented to the scanner portion of a digital transmitter device. After scanning, the digital transmitter device transforms the scanned image into a digital representation that is then saved in a data format, such as in a bit map data format or in a Portable Document Format (PDF). Electronic messaging can be used to send an electronic mail (e-mail) message from the digital transmitter device with an attachment of the digitized representation in the data format. The e-mail message can be sent to recipients over an interconnecting network, where the recipients have an e-mail address that a user manually enters at the digital transmitter device or that a user specifies using a predefined list of recipient e-mail addresses that can be stored in a memory of the digital transmitter device.
A hardcopy of a document that is to be scanned may need to be modified so that the resultant scanned document will contain the modifications. For instance, a user may wish to add a text message or a symbol to the hardcopy of the document. To do so, a softcopy of the document is edited using a document processing application. Then, a hardcopy of the edited document is output for scanning. In the interest of security, any such modification of the document may be required to be validated by an access control methodology prior to such modification and/or the outputting of the edited document prior to a transmission thereof.
There is a need for a scanner-based device, such as a digital transmitter device, that provides the security of user access control for modifications of a document at the scanner-based device without requiring the user to edit a softcopy of the document on another computing device.